Discusses four problems facing gifted students in elementary science classrooms. Suggests development of teacher-made science packets to resolve these and other problems. A sample lesson on animal classification for grade three is provided. (JN)

The effectiveness of methods teaching how to identify the main idea of expository paragraphs was tested using 47 remedial reading 6th through 11th graders. Tested were: strategy training; classification training; combined training; and practice only. Strategy training improved performance, while classification training only improved performance…

Describes a framework for effective unit planning directed at teachers of French in Canada. To be effective, language teachers must know societal and professional values written into the curriculum guidelines; the learner's needs, interests, and background; course content and the culture contributing to the course; and teaching methods and…

To assist a class of Hispanic teenagers whose English reading and writing skills were limited, a program using both Spanish and English, or a bilingual model, was implemented. Application of the "alternate language" approach is described. (11 references) (LB)

Presents a series of exercises to help students understand the importance of the limits of taxonomic keys and to identify the appropriate levels. Introductory activities include having students classify screws, "gummy bears," and beans. (PR)

Discusses (1) the need for teachers to understand student conceptions; (2) alternative conceptions that students formulate; (3) changing conceptions; (4) representing conceptual knowledge for studying conceptual change; (5) strategies for inducing change; and (6) a taxonomy of conceptual change. (Contains 61 references.) (MDH)

First-year students in genetics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, attend two general biology modules, one in each semester. Teaching involves four formal lectures per week of 45 min each, one 3-h practical, and one lecture period tutorial. These students, graduating from secondary education, are well schooled in rote learning but…

Having facilitated, read, and collected more than 200 teacher research pieces written by prospective and practicing teachers, the authors conducted a systematic analysis of the domains and contents of teachers' questions as they embarked on their first research study. Focusing on the questions teachers ask led to the generation of a typology of…

Using a composite example of field trips from several years of traveling to Yellowstone with high school biology students, the author illustrates how to raise the cognitive level of science instruction and student learning through science field trips. The author examines what teachers can do to raise the level of both teaching and learning in all…

When students are working with hand held technology, such as graphics calculators, we usually only see the outcomes of their activities in the form of a contribution to a written solution of a mathematical problem. It is more difficult to capture their process of thinking or actions as they use the technology to solve a problem. In this paper we…

There are many questions to be asked about the pedagogical practice of questioning. Questions provide insight into what students at any age or grade level already know about a topic, which provides a beginning point for teaching. Questions reveal misconceptions and misunderstandings that must be addressed for teachers to move student thinking…

Plato wrote that higher order thinking could not start until the student had mastered conventional wisdom. The American educational establishment has turned Plato on his head with the help of a dubious approach to teaching developed by one Benjamin Bloom. Bloom's taxonomy was intended for higher education, but its misappropriation has resulted in…

The 12th iteration of the International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2019) is organized under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society in Montreal, Canada. The theme of this year's conference is EDM in Open-Ended Domains. As EDM has matured it has increasingly been applied to open-ended and ill-defined tasks…

This paper explores the scope of "failure" in the period of practice immediately prior to teacher certification, by examining personal experiences of 25 preservice teachers who "failed" or hovered in failure-like circumstances. Indicators of failure included poor interpersonal skills, lack of primary focus on students, lack of commitment and…

Data are presented comparing children with learning disabilities to children with mild mental retardation, and comparing these two groups to normally achieving peers matched for chronological age (ages 6 to 8). Four studies were conducted, involving different types of oddity problems and rhyming skills. Results of the four studies indicated little…